


starlight in the gloom

by MisanthropyMuse



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Dreams and Nightmares, Flash Fic, Gen, Introspection, No Dialogue, POV First Person, POV Obi-Wan Kenobi, Post-Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Regrets, Stream of Consciousness, sad thoughts, short and painful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 11:20:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30021003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MisanthropyMuse/pseuds/MisanthropyMuse
Summary: "Now hope is merely a tool for survival in a world that left me little else to hang on to. Cautious optimism, what you so often mistook for mistrust, is all I have to carry me through each day. And dreams, well, they’re mostly nightmares now, sometimes memories, other times the fragile illusions of a broken man."Obi-Wan dreams of lives he never lived.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 5
Kudos: 8





	starlight in the gloom

_“ There's nowhere left to hide  
In no one to confide  
The truth burns deep inside  
And will never die ”_

**_Sing for Absolution - Muse_ **

I’ve never been a dreamer.

The Jedi Order does its best to squash that annoying tendency out of younglings long before their time as Padawans. They train us for realism. Drill into us to _live in the present, focus on the now, think only on what you have and what you can do, realistically, objectively._ Only knowledge could lead us, only certainty could keep us in the light.

Sometimes it felt like even optimism was frowned upon, but maybe that was just me, ever the anxious child, ever the cautious boy, so afraid of being disappointed to the point of rejecting hope.

You changed that, in so many ways, and in so many others you ruined it again.

You did bring incertitude and fear into my life, in a way that often made me feel like I was a youngling again, doubting my every step, my every action, but you also gave me a faith stronger than anything I’d ever felt before. I loved you more than life itself and I trusted you more than I ever trusted myself, and now that you’re gone, you’ve taken all of that with you, and there’s little that can fill that void.

Now hope is merely a tool for survival in a world that left me little else to hang on to. Cautious optimism, what you so often mistook for mistrust, is all I have to carry me through each day. And dreams, well, they’re mostly nightmares now, sometimes memories, other times the fragile illusions of a broken man.

I mostly dream of you, that was to be expected. All you could have been, all I could have done. Grief has built an endless maze of ‘ _what_ if’s inside my brain, and while I can usually steer clear of it during the day, at night I find myself longing for it. While awake I only focus on the harsh reality of our actual lives, but in sleep it’s so easy to lose myself in that comforting abyss of devastating delusion.

The dreams where we don’t meet are strangely satisfying. Imagining your life without my presence poisoning it. Sometimes you still end up a Jedi, trained by Qui-Gon to be much stronger and wiser than I could ever teach you to be. In others, you never leave Tatooine, and you become a pilot or a farmer or a bounty hunter. In all of them, you’re happy, you’re better off without me. Usually, in those dreams, I’ve died before our paths could cross, and what a consolation. While it’s easy to imagine you thrive without me, I can never picture myself living a life that doesn’t include you. How boring that would be, how desperately dull.

In some dreams, we meet the way we did, but you leave the Order before you get the chance to destroy it. For your mother, for Padmé, for Ahsoka, or for yourself. It’s always a relief to see what kind of person you could have been if I hadn’t forced you into a mould you could not fit. In some dreams I leave with you, though I know I could have never been that brave, I also think that, maybe, if you’d asked, I would have followed. In others I’m the one who sends you away, and you hate me for it, and it breaks my heart, but we both know it’s for the best. Sometimes it saves you. Sometimes you come to get your revenge, and I gladly let you. I can’t imagine myself ever being whole after losing you.

Then, the dreams where I don’t lose you are the hardest to wake up from.

I’ve imagined this in so many different ways.

It starts with the dreams where we’re different people, leading different lives, and when we meet, I get to know you and love you in all different ways. There’s not prophecy there, no destiny to fulfil, and we get to be happy leading normal ordinary lives. I indulge in these fantasies whenever any adherence to reality hurts too much, to lose myself a little, and forget a bit about you too, to find comfort in impossibility.

But then, I’ve mapped all the turning points in our lives that could have led us to a different ending, I’ve explored all the paths that could have taken us to happiness.

There are the dreams where Qui-Gon and I save your mother and bring her to Coruscant with you.

The ones where you save your mother and your heart stays in one piece.

The ones where you leave Padmé, and though it hurts, eventually you’re made stronger for it.

The ones where you save Padmé and you get to be a father for your children.

The ones where Ahsoka meets you on Mustafar, and she succeeds where I failed.

The ones where I save you, where you realise that you’re wrong, where I convince you to stay, to fight with me, where we win.

The ones where you kill me. The ones where we both die.

The ones where I follow you to the Dark Side. Even that can be a consolation, sometimes, compared to the desolation my unwavering loyalty to the Order led me to, compared to the pain of watching you turn and fall and burn.

The ones where I’m a better Master, where I listen and see and act in time to save you. The ones where I recognise my mistakes and the faults of the Order in time to prevent you from turning against us.

The ones where the Republic wins the war and the ones where the war never starts at all.

I dream so often of what our lives could have been in peace.

Mostly, I dream of you being free. Free from pain, from fear, from hate, from the weight of a thousand-year-old prophecy that was laid down too early on your fragile shoulders, from the chains of a destiny that needed to be carried out, through whatever means.

I’ve read old stories from ancient cultures that say that heroes can never be happy. It filled me with dread when people started calling you the Hero with no Fear, but I thought I’d help you be the first. I wished you could have been glorious and happy, but I failed.

Now the memory of Anakin Skywalker lives unstained in the minds of everyone who ever admired you, those who believe you died and those who think I killed you, and I have to carry this pain on my own, to live with the weight of what I did and what I didn’t do, and ashamed of the knowledge of what I would do for a chance to go back and change something, anything, to give you the life you deserved.

Alone with my excruciating memories and with my foolish comforting dreams, and with the ghost of you, ever-present, waiting for the day we get to meet again in the Force.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no excuse for this. I wrote it in a couple of hours while I was supposed to be studying and decided to post it right away to take it off my chest. I almost cried a couple of times while writing it so I apologise if it made anyone else cry as well. Cheaper than therapy I guess.


End file.
